David Turetsky

Lecturer
College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity
Department: Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity

Expertise:
Cybersecurity: policy, regulation, public-private partnerships, information sharing, market incentives, international norms, national security, elections, privacy. Emergency communications: 9-1-1 system, wireless emergency alerts, network reliability and resilience, FirstNet, etc.

Campus phone: 518-442-5289
Campus email: [email protected]

Biography:

David Turetsky brings more than 35 years of experience, including senior roles in business, government and law. Immediately before joining UAlbany, he was based in Washington D.C., where he co-led the cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice at global law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. In addition, he served as a member of the American Bar Association's Cybersecurity Legal Task Force, co-leads the privacy and security working group of the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization Standards Organization created pursuant to an executive order issued by President Obama, and was co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association's Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security Committee.

Turetsky served as a senior leader at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for most of his tenure as chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, where he led cybersecurity policy for the FCC, including its public-private efforts and its engagement in Obama interagency cybersecurity work led by the White House and other agencies. He also led the FCC’s efforts regarding emergency communications and related emergency preparedness and homeland security issues, working closely with stakeholders and other government agencies, and oversaw the FCC’s continuity of operations program. He served briefly as deputy chief of the FCC’s International Bureau.

In business, Turetsky served as a senior officer of a telecommunications services start-up that he helped to grow and bring public; and twice served as Management Trustee, while in private law practice, appointed by federal courts on the recommendation of the Bush Department of Justice (DoJ), to manage all aspects of mobile wireless service businesses in a total of 20 mostly rural markets under merger consent decrees until those businesses were divested. He led or co-led the antitrust practice of another global law firm for seven years and has more than 20 years of experience in major law firms, mostly as a partner, in Washington D.C., and in New York City. In the Clinton Administration, Turetsky served as a deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust in the DoJ, with special responsibility for competition enforcement and policy issues affecting regulated industries, in the U.S. and abroad. This included a senior leadership role for the DoJ in working with the White House and Congress in the development, passage and implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Turetsky has a J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law, studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and has a B.A. magna cum laude from Amherst College.

He writes and speaks often and is regularly quoted in the press.